


AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



OSWEGO COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 



AT MEXICO, SEPTEMBER 11, 



AND BEFORE THE 



FRANKLIN COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 

AT MALONE, SEPTEMBER 13, 1861. 



BY LUTHER H. TUCKER. 



.Published at the Request of these Societies. 



ALBANY : 

PRINTED BY C. VAN BENTHUTSEN. 
1861. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



OSWEGO COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 



AT MEXICO, SEPTEMBER 11, 



AND BEFORE THE 



FRANKLIN COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 

AT MALONE, SEPTEMBER 13, 1861. 
BY LUTHER H. TUCKER. 



.Published, at the Request of these Societies. 



ALBANY : 

PRINTED BY C. VAN BENTHUYSEN. 
1861. 



jy trow** 
13 '06 






ADDRESS 



Gentlemen — War times have generally been times of dimi- 
nished production and enhanced prices. Large numbers are 
commonly drawn from their labors on the harvest field, in 
gathering in the means of life, to take up, on the battle field, the 
implements of death. The present struggle to subvert the 
Constitution of our fathers, to trample under foot the laws and 
liberties of our Union, fortunately — or, should I not rather say, 
providentially — found the loyal portion of the country with gra- 
naries filled to their utmost, from the proceeds of the farmer's 
toil, and with bank-coffers also unprecedentedly full, from the pro- 
ceeds of that vast surplus for which the wants of other nations 
have opened a ready market. At no former period in our his- 
tory, in all probability, have we ever been so well provided 
both with food, which is the life-blood, and with money, which 
has been termed the sinews, of a war ; with few, if any excep- 
tions, beyond the single season of 1860, have we ever had crops 
aggregating a production so great as those which have just been 
cut and housed, so far as their extent can now be estimated. 
In Great Britain and on the Continent of Europe, on the other 
hand, the general character of the present year, although more 
propitious than the disastrous season by which it was preceded, 
has scarcely anywhere been such as to return a full average 
yield ; and there is, consequently, every prospect of the con- 
tinuance of a considerable foreign demand, — rendering the North 
every day stronger and stronger, pecuniarily, for the suppression 
of the insurgent movement, while at the same time conferring 
upon the Farmer a degree of independence enjoyed by no other 
class or pursuit among as. And y$t, shut off as we were so sud- 
denly from the Southern market, by the political tempest ; with 
the current prices for our grain and dairy products falling, like 
the mercury before a thickening storm ; with the gloom of the 
contest apparently growing darker and darker, and the certainty 



constantly becoming more apparent and more absolute, that 
we were to look for no mere summer shower, — some of us had 
perhaps begun to be discouraged lest the requirements of our 
armies and of other nations should fail to be sufficient to con- 
sume the crops we have produced, and pay us for them at remu- 
nerative rates. 

Low Prices Necessitate Better Farming. 

We meet, gentlemen, on such anniversaries as this, not alone 
for competition, one with another, as regards the practical achieve- 
ments which each has been working out in the past, but also to 
receive and impart suggestions for the future, to encourage one 
another in farther improvement, to obtain what light we can 
upon the means by which this improvement is to be brought 
about. Much of the wonderful advancement which has charac- 
terized English Agriculture during the present century has been 
justly ascribed, as you will remember, to the high rents which 
the English farmer has been obliged to pay — compelling him to 
unceasing exertion and the adoption of thorough-going system ; 
forcing him to count the cost of every operation, in order to 
reduce it — or, if necessary, to enlarge it, for one may sometimes 
be as good policy as the other — with the object of securing 
returns proportionably increased ; — in fine, to sift out, so far as 
possible, every sort of loss and waste, positive or negative, in 
order to make a profit out of farming by the sheer exercise of 
skill, where, without such management, failure and ruin were 
inevitable. A somewhat similar compulsion, arising from the 
virgin wealth of the vast prairies in our newer States, when com- 
peting with our Older and less cheaply cultivated soils at the 
East — a compulsion which bids fair, in any event, to become 
constantly more and more urgent, — has been for some time tend- 
ing, I think, to give a similar impetus to improvement here : and 
now that we have been placed amidst new circumstances to 
derange our markets, and to reduce, for the time being at least, 
the money value of our crops, it becomes a matter of great prac- 
tical interest for us, to consider whether there is not a lesson of 
farther good to be derived from the present condition of affairs ; 
■ — whether this cloud, also, has not its " silver lining;" whether, 
in fact, paradoxical though it may appear, low prices should 
not really be regarded as indicements to better farming. We 
have entered bravely upon the task of showing to the world the 



degree of Military spirit we possess : animated by a glorious 
patriotism, three hundred thousand men, or more, have already 
gone forth to fight in support of the best form of government 
mankind has ever seen ; would that we might also prove that 
the Resources of our Agriculture have never yet been fairly 
estimated, or fully tested, and that while the dignity and perpe- 
tuity of our Institutions are being vindicated by the strong arm 
of the soldier, we, the farmers of the country, may at the same 
time support its armies, and enlarge its wealth, by the adoption 
of a more enlightened, a more economical, a more productive, 
and a more progressive system of Husbandry. 

Are we to Anticipate the Continuance of Low Prices? 

I have spoken of low prices, as if they were to continue as 
they now are ; and if such should be the case, could we not safely 
predict that the farmers of New York would be the most inde- 
pendent and prosperous of all her citizens ? But, unless the war 
is brought to its conclusion before it has time to produce a sensi- 
ble effect upon the Agricultural production of the country, which 
Ave, perhaps, have now no reason to anticipate, it will be strange 
if its ultimate result is not to interfere with sales of Wheat, for 
example, at less than a dollar a bushel — of Butter at less than a 
shilling a pound. Indeed, so universally has it been the result 
of War to diminish the Agricultural production of a country so 
engaged, that the London " Mark Lane Express," the leading 
organ of the English grain trade — in the face of our large sur- 
plus from the crop of 1860 and apparently favorable prospect 
for 1861, — has repeatedly urged upon the attention of its readers, 
during the past few months, the assumed fact that Great Britain 
cannot long look to America for the breadstuffs she is obliged to 
purchase.* And, aside from the effect the existence of the war, 
may, or may not, have upon the crop of 1862, it is perhaps 
hardly to be anticipated, that the whole country will again 
enjoy the general exemption from dangers of drouth or frost, of 
damaging storms or destructive insects, which has so generally 
characterized this and the previous year, and given us, with rare 



• See the " Mark Lane Express " under date of May 27, July 15 and July 29, among other 
numbers, for leading editorials referring to this subject ; and, as recently as the number of 
Sept. 30, a correspondent of the same journal, dating from New York, argues at length that 
" this is likely to be the last year that England may expect any shipments of breadstuffs to a 
large amount " from the United States ! 



exceptions, both East and West, returns so remarkable and so 
free from serious injury. Adopting this train of thought, we are 
again led to the conclusion that the Eastern farmer should strain 
every nerve for a spirited campaign in 1862; and if, owing to 
the causes just referred to, prices should then advance, he will 
be ready to avail himself of the benefit of this advance, — subject 
to no delays and expenses arising Irom the transportation which 
taxes his Western competitor so heavily — free from those risks 
and losses which have endangered or engulphed the fortunes of 
so many, engaged in other pursuits, more pretentious perhaps, 
but inherently less sound and stable than his own. On the other 
hand, should the smiles of Providence again rest upon our whole 
territory, from Massachusetts Bay to the banks of the Mississippi, 
again clothing every field in abundant plenty, — the Farmer here 
will certainly be none the worse for having taken every precau- 
tion to secure as large crops of every kind, as his land can be 
made to yield, — and our Country will be none the worse, if, out 
of such profusion, we should once more be able to undersell the 
Farmers of every other nation, in the great grain markets of the 
world, and thus maintain that westward flow of the precious 
metals, which we need so much to meet our heavy war expendi- 
ture, and to add to the current wealth in circulation among us. 

The Course or our Agriculture in the Past. 

But, gentlemen, on the eve of such a struggle as that which 
we have now entered upon, is it not the part of wisdom to take a 
brief retrospect of the Past ? For nearly fifty years we have 
enjoyed the almost uninterrupted blessings of Peace, with every 
advantage for prosperity and improvement, For thirty years 
Agricultural Periodicals have been in circulation among us, 
reporting the successes of our best farmers — indeed, employing 
their own pens to disseminate, in every section of the State and 
Country, the systems most successfully adopted in any one 
locality. For twenty years the Farmers of New York have 
annually met in competition at our State Fairs, and the great 
brotherhood of County and Town Societies has been growing 
up, carrying increased intercourse and a greater rivalry, not only 
to every neighborhood, but almost to every farm. And yet 
to-day, is it quite without hesitation or doubt, that we can ask 
— Has our Agriculture, as a whole, improved or not ? Has the 
production of the State, in proportion to the number of acres 



farmed, advanced or retrograded ? Do our methods of culture 
and the crops we obtain, compare more or less favorably in 1861, 
than in 1821, with the systems and the productiveness of Great 
Britain, at these two periods ? Does our farming pay ? and are 
its profits any larger or more secure, now than heretofore ? 
These are questions which we should all do well to ponder — they 
are questions which come home to the business and the bosoms 
of us all. How can we face duller markets and lower prices — 
how can we take heart to renew the labors which the succession 
of the seasons never fails to bring with it in their order, with- 
out knowing whether we have really been accomplishing any- 
thing more or better in the past, than our fathers did before us 
— whether Agriculture has been a backslider or a laggard, while 
every other Art has gone forward, — the Farmer growing poorer, 
or remaining at a stand-still, while his compeers in every other 
pursuit have been laying by a competence or accumulating 
wealth ? 

Is our Farming of a Paying or Progressive Kind? 
These questions are urged upon our attention, moreover, 
because there are certain statements in current circulation, 
which are, as I believe, partially unfounded, or very greatly 
exaggerated, and calculated to do injury rather than good. One 
class of the statements alluded to, emanates quite frequently 
from among farmers themselves. "Farming," they will tell you, 
" does not pay. It is a life of slavish toil — of unceasing and ill- 
rewarded exertion — of hazards in profit and exposure of person 
— of few pleasures and many pains." Accordingly we find the 
children of those who express such opinions, as soon as the wel- 
come age of manhood comes, branching off into any other pursuit 
rather than follow that which their fathers have always taken 
pains to render both discouraging and repulsive to them. Ano- 
ther class of the statements mentioned, we constantly hear from 
would-be scientific gentlemen, — who may perhaps have patent 
manures to sell, or letters of advice to give at a reasonable fee, — 
or soil analyses to make — very cheap, and very valueless. They 
tell us that we are rapidly exhausting our soils. That our 
wheat crops formerly averaged 25 bushels per acre where they 
now average from 8 to 12 bushels.* That the ruin of our soils 

* This assertion, from whatever source it may have originated, has acquired great cur- 
rency, and is so commonly repeated — often by those whose reputation as authorities 'has 
shielded it from criticism — that it seems to he now received almost as an accepted fact. It 



and ourselves is certainly impending, unless we adopt their spe- 
cifics, and come and sit at their feet for instruction. I would 
not even appear to decry the services or the dignity of science — 
much less to depreciate the importance of knowledge, or discou- 
rage the more thorough education of our young farmers; but let 
us be very wary of pretenders, remembering always that 
quackery is no stain upon the shield of true science, and that 
even she herself cannot point out to us any " royal road " to 
thorough farming, which is not in accordance with the truths of 
our every-day experience, or which shall relieve us from the neces- 
sity of constant observation and the skillful management of our 
affairs. 

Money-Making in any Pursuit mainly Dependent upon 
Industry and Skill. 

In speaking of the profits and pleasures of farming, we must 
put it upon the same level as we should an occupation of any 
other kind. Suppose I address my neighbor, the tailor, or the 
shoemaker, 'and ask if tailoring or shoemaking pays, and is an 
agreeable way of life ? Suppose I turn to the merchant or the 
lawyer, and inquire whether over the counter or before the 
court, there is money to be made and enjoyment to be won? In 
either of these cases, or in any similar case, it is easy to predict 
the answer, when you are questioning a man of industry, of a 
reasonable degree of economy, ability and skill, who has a taste 
for the pursuit in which he is engaged. Indeed, with success, 
there almost always comes a taste for that which is the source of 
success, if, as is not impossible, it may not have previously 
existed in a very prominent way. But go, on the other hand 
to a shiftless mechanic, a careless, credit-less merchant, an indo- 
lent or blundering lawyer, and you will be sure to learn that 
either of these employments is an inevitably laborious and losing 



occurs as a stereotyped phrase in our Agricultural books, papers and addresses. Perhaps at 
first intended to show the injury sustained by some of our farmers from the Hessian fly and 
Wheat midge, it is now brought forward uniformly, to prove the deterioration of our soils ; 
extended, as applying to the whole State, and exaggerated in various ways, apparently 
according to the fancy of the person using it. Thus the "Mark Lane Express" in one of 
the articles already referred to, gravely says of our wheat lands on its own editorial respon- 
sibility : "Even in New York State the falling off is very great. Lands that produced a 
few years back 25 bushels per acre, now barely average 5. In Albany district, lands that 
formerly yielded from 30 to 40 bushels have sunk to 7^ bushels, and in some counties to five 
and six." 






9 

one, if not also intensely disgusting and disagreeable ! It is the 
bad workman quarrelling with his tools. There are of course 
exceptions, here, as to other rules. But in farming, as in the 
other established occupations of mankind, we are nevertheless 
obliged to conclude that when it fails to be reasonably remune- 
rative, the fault must be in the particular individual or circum- 
stances, not in the class and pursuit to which they belong. 

The Deterioration or our Soil and Crops Unsupported in 
Fact — Importance of Agricultural Statistics. 

In speaking of the improvement or retrogression of our Farm- 
ing, of the deterioration or non-deterioration of our soils, — it is 
to be deeply regretted that there should be so much ground as 
there undoubtedly is, for the assertions alluded to. There can 
be no dispute that many farms have been worn down almost to 
the last degree of apparent exhaustion, by mismanagement and 
rapacity. At the same time, the ranks of good farmers are filling 
by degrees ; and, to take the whole of this State together, I am 
very much inclined to discredit any statement which should 
make out either its average or its aggregate production greater, 
either as regards the number of acres or the average produce per 
acre, at any former period in its History, than it is to-day. I can 
find no statistics which justify such an assertion. But I must 
again express the regret that this can only be matter of opinion, 
based upon such opportunities of intercourse as I have had with 
observant men in different localities, so long as we have no 
system for the annual collection of Agricultural Statistics. It is 
not alone questions of merely speculative interest which such 
statistics would enable us to decide : but each year and each 
generation would thus place on record, for the benefit of succeed- 
ing years and generations, the encouragement of its successes, 
the monition of its mistakes ; and many matters of vague 
opinion would by degrees be brought, approximatively at least, 
to a definite understanding and settlement. And yet it is our 
farmers who are mainly, if not solely, responsible for the failure 
of the several legislative attempts that have been made to secure 
the collection of our Agricultural Statistics. Here we should 
be ashamed to find the Empire State behind Ohio, which for ten 
years past has been setting us an example in this regard ; and I 
am constantly assured by those conversant with the Agriculture 

2 



10 

of that State, of the satisfaction its Agricultural Statistics have 
given, in realizing all or more than all the benefits that had 
been anticipated from them. But their real value cannot be 
fully appreciated, until the system has been carried on for a still 
longer course of years ; for like old wine the interest of such 
records constantly multiplies as time rolls on. 

The Problem or Maintaining the Fertility or the Soil. 

It is the great problem which has puzzled the farmers of every 
age — how best to maintain the fertility of the soil under the 
constant drafts it is obliged to sustain to meet the daily wants of 
man and beast. In a new land the virgin luxuriance which at 
first requires no artificial aid from the manure heap, and perhaps 
seems almost inexhaustible, after a crop or two, — or it may be, 
not until after a considerable series of years — shows signs of 
diminished productiveness ; — and then it is soon discovered that 
Art must come to the assistance of Nature — that the soil must 
be fed as well as bled — that the old, old study which dates back 
some thousands of years before the parable was narrated of the 
barren tree that required to be " digged about and dunged," 
must be renewed and again investigated, under changing condi- 
tions, but in accordance with unchanging principles. As the 
Agriculture of a country grows still older, this question of 
manures and manuring, becomes more and still more the subject 
of discussion among its Farmers. We, in New York, are as yet 
but just upon the threshold of the question. We look around us 
upon here and there a locality, or perhaps a single farm, which 
has been "run down" by over-cropping, — where the farmers, 
like their land, are now poor — and, again, upon occasional 
instances of well sustained production and prosperous farmers, — 
and we are beginning to learn that in the one case proper atten- 
tion to manuring has been invariably neglected — in the other, 
that it has been, just as invariably, the object of unceasing care 
and judicious expenditure. The logical connection between 
abundant compost-piles in well-managed barn-yards, and heavy 
granaries or well-filled hay-mows, it seems almost uniformly to 
require a generation or two, thoroughly to establish ; and even 
now, as much as we hear it discussed on such occasions as this 
— as much as we read about it in our agricultural papers — one 
would certainly think, to judge from far too many farmsteads we 
pass by on every public road I have ever travelled, that the agri 






11 

cultural mind was not yet quite clear as to the cardinal neces- 
sity of economizing and liberally applying manurial substances. 

Animal Life Becoming in turn the Support or Vegetable 

Life. 
The philosophy of vegetation — the connection between the 
constituents we find in the soil, and those which make up the 
plant grown upon that soil — is not yet perfectly understood, 
even by those who have devoted the most time to its investiga- 
tion. It seems to be even now, for example, an undecided point 
whether the rootlet can take up its food, except in a state of 
solution ; and we might almost say that the old theory of Jethro 
Tull — the extreme comminution of the particles of the soil by 
thorough tillage, as supplying nourishment in a form directly 
available for the plant — has been revived in substance, although 
under a somewhat different guise, by writers of recent date.* 
The doctrine announced when chemists began to promise so 
much aid to the farmer, — that we only need to analyze first the 
soil and then the plant, to know exactly what is wanting to 
increase the power of the one to produce the other, has been 
exploded ; for, between two fields, of which one is almost bar- 
ren, and the other has been rendered capable of yielding a heavy 
crop by a dressing of a few cwt. of guano, there is not chemical 
difference enough to be detected in an ordinary analysis by the 
nicest appliances that Science has yet placed in our hands. f One 
learned man, who has expended a lifetime in the laboratory and 
in out-door experiments, will tell us that we must replace in the 
land the minerals which our crops are yearly carrying off; ano- 
ther that it is nitrogenous or ammoniacal matters that are alone 
essential, not only to supply the demands of the plant, but also 
to render the minerals — which, he will claim, are already amply 
abundant enough in the soil — assimilable by its roots. Notwith- 
standing these and other difficulties which prove so embarrassing 
to " disagreeing doctors," all practical men of much experience 
and observation, have ascertained that Nature — here, as else- 
where — is ready to come to our relief if only the requisite degree 
of industry and ingenuity are put in exercise ; that her machi- 



* See Liebig's Letters on Modem Agriculture— Letter III., page 37. 

f With regard to the immediate value of Soil Analysis, even ivhen honestly made, for the 
practical purposes of the farmer, see " The AmericaD Journal of Science and Arts," for Sep 
tember, 1861— article, " Agricultural Chemistry," by Prof. S. W. Johnson. 



12 

nery is too well planned to wear itself out, unless we negligently 
disregard its laws or criminally derange its functions; that 
animal life and vegetable life are connected in the harmony of 
one great system, by that wonderful provision, which compels each 
in turn to become the support and sustenance of the other. Thus 
every farm, properly stocked and wisely managed, contains 
within itself the means, not only of sustaining its fertility, but 
also, as I believe, of developing and enlarging it, to a limit that 
has perhaps as yet never been fully determined. 

The Resources or any Soil may be Exhausted, or, by Good 
Management, Rendered Practically Illimitable. 

In this question of the permanently productive power of the 
soil, there are, as in most others, two extreme positions — one, 
which is in disregard both of reason and experience, and the 
other, which is perhaps only an exaggerated form of presenting 
the truth. One of our old-fashioned farmers here, or a farmer of 
the present day on the prairies of the West, may tell me that 
the nature of his soil is such that it requires no nursing — no 
manuring — that its fertility will never fail. Him I do not 
believe ; eventually, — under his way of farming — his soil must, 
practically speaking, become "exhausted ;" instead of that kind 
of management which shall only draw the interest, so to speak, 
upon the wealth that has been accumulating there for his use, 
during untold years, he has attacked his capital, and is every 
day prodigally diminishing it, On the other hand, the chemist 
— the great Liebig, for instance — will argue, to take the island 
of Great Britain as an example — that all its mineral soil- 
resources for the food and sustenance of future vegetation, are 
in fact running into the sea through its city sewers — the ultimate 
end of all its Agricultural production being to feed the vast 
crowds of humanity there congregated ; — and that the entire 
loss of these mineral elements can only be a question of time, 
unless prompt means are taken to utilize the sewerage of every 
town and hamlet, — just as " a well, however deep it may be, which 
receives no supply of water, must in the end become empty, if its 
water is constantly pumped out."* Him again I do not fully 
credit ; for while the pump is pouring forth the contents of the 
well, there may possibly be hidden springs which he overlooks ; 



* Letter from Baron Liebig to Alderman Mechi, Nov. 17, 1860. 



13 

the capitalist may be spending more or less every year — and yet 
so long as his expenditures are less than the interest which 
accrues upon his money, he will be growing richer instead of 
poorer ; — and there is one sense, in which I believe the soil to 
be, when properly managed, illimitable in its resources — subject 
to no necessity of our carrying back upon it, pound for pound, 
exactly the materials, in weight and kind, that our crops have 
carried off. What land, if such were the law of vegetation, has 
ever been, century after century, the home of man, whether 
savage or civilized, which would not in the end have become a 
desert ? It has been claimed that the Chinese * really do 
accomplish this return to the soil of all the inorganic elements of 
the food which it produces, but we may be permitted to doubt 
whether their careful exactness in this respect has not been 
extolled by travellers somewhat beyond its actual desert — whe- 
ther, in point of fact, the manure they save and apply, is at all 
comparable in quantity with that which the English import from 
other nations in the form of guano, bones, and feeding stuffs for 
their animals, or mine out of the depths of their own island in 
the form of useful minerals or the fossil remains of extinct animal 
races. 

How Nature may Co-operate in Maintaining and Extending 

these Resources. 

Perhaps you have all heard of the Grand Cathedral of Cologne, 
commenced more than six hundred years ago, and still unfinished. 
The faithful have been contributing for some time past, through- 
out the European dominions of the Papal Church, to arrest the 
progress of decay and ruin in the parts that have been standing 
incomplete so long, and to carry out the great designs of its first 
architects in all their original magnificence. Two summers ago 
I stood upon one of its towers, where, two hundred feet above 
the ground, the tops of its massive walls have lain exposed, for 
four or five centuries, to those agencies of wind and weather, 
which have been at Avork upon our rocks and soils ever since the 
world was. And here I found as luxuriant sweet briars as I ever 
saw growing in the fence corners of an untidy farmer in regions 
less etherial — with the grasses growing thickly around and under 
them, sprinkled over with other wild flowers ; and, as I thrust 

* Liebig's Letters on Modern Agriculture, page 248. 



14 

my stick into fully three inches of as fertile looking a soil as any 
gardener would wish for his choicest pot-plants, I could not but 
ask myself — " How came they here, at an elevation too great for 
the wind to have deposited the dust of the streets which lie so 
far beneath — roses in bloom upon the surface of mason work — 
tender grasses green, where the mortar of the builder below, 
unexposed to light and air, has hardened into flint ?" I suppose 
that the mosses were the first settlers — the squatters — on this 
lofty and at first very unpromising territory ; that, as they 
decayed, and the surface of the stone was corroded and disinte- 
grated by atmospheric influences, the seeds dropped by the birds 
as they flew by, gave birth to other vegetation ; and that thus 
by degrees, under the rains and snows of so many summers and 
winters— under the growth and decay of so many successive 
generations of leaves and flowers and seeds, a process had taken 
place, exactly analogous to that which is always going forward, 
on every mountain, in every valley, which the sun shines or the 
storm beats upon. Plow does an island far away from any other 
abode of vegetable life, in an uncrossed ocean — built up by the 
slow labors of myriads of coral insects, — how does such an island 
become clad with herbage — first a bare and untenanted cliff — 
then the nursery of the simpler forms of vegetable growth — 
until, as they moulder away, and the organic elements they have 
been gathering from every breeze and spray, are mingled with 
the abraded rock, there is a stratum deep enough for the chance 
seed, left by the roving sea-fowl in exchange for the rest and 
shelter he has found there after some unusually adventurous 
flight, to grow up and mature its seed, — until, eventually, tall and 
sturdy trees throw out their branches to the sky where first the 
moss itself could scarcely find nourishment for its tiny forest of 
verdure. 

Thus, if ave do not Endeavor to Pump Extravagantly, shall 
we not Always Find " a Supply of Water " in our Well? 

And does not the very fact, that, where thus at work alone in 
her own grand laboratory, Nature can effect such almost creative 
changes — storing up combined treasures of organic and inorganic 
matter in such form as to be most available for vegetable repro- 
duction, — afford sufficient evidence, if evidence be necessary, 
that we may devise some means by which to draw upon her 
accumulations, and promote her processes, in almost any soil, 



15 

without in reality seriously trenching upon the incomparably 
greater stores we leave behind ? And as, by thorough and 
deeper tillage, the atmosphere and the rains from heaven, are 
constantly made to penetrate more deeply and effectively into 
the crust of this great earth, and as the stimulants we apply in 
the form of manures, render these materials practically assimila- 
ble, who shall say that the uncounted generations to come, will 
lack that daily bread which our Father above has promised even 
to the raven and the sparrow ? Do not all the great rivers that 
run into the sea, carry down in their course incalculable quanti- 
ties of soil — more perhaps in the single channel of the Missis- 
sippi, of the real mineral elements of plants, than have been 
washed out through all the sewers of all the cities that ever were 
built ? and yet, the old processes of Nature — except in here and 
there a spot unusually bleak and storm-beaten — are maintaining 
their regular progressive round, and the world seems to be none 
the poorer for all this seeming loss. 

This Supply Renewed when the Pumping Ceases. 

The effect of the elements in promoting the vegetative faculty 
of the soil, is familiar to us in the case of a fallow, where, after a 
season of "rest," without any addition of material from other 
sources, the powers of the land are in some measure evidently 
renewed and strengthened. So also if utterly " exhausted," as 
we call it, for a particular crop, after some years of respite either 
from all cultivation or from that single crop alone, the ingre- 
dients making up that crop will seem to have resumed such con- 
dition — mechanically, chemically or otherwise — as to be again 
available for its abundant production. And it thus becomes a 
question — but rather one involving the use of language, than of 
any very great practical importance at present — whether a soil 
is really in any sense exhausted, when by bad management it 
ceases to be fertile. Chemistry, unaided, would fail to deter- 
mine either the extent of the so-called exhaustion, or by what 
particular crops it had been brought about ; she might, indeed, 
find there all the elements necessary for plant-growth, just as 
she can discover little difference between the stony Massachu- 
setts hill-sides and the rich bottom lands of the Scioto Valley* — 
but one thing is very apparent, that they are not present under 



* See analyses by Dr. Wells of Cambridge, quoted on page 54. vol v., " Country Gen- 
tleman," 1855. 



]6 

the conditions necessary in order that they should be readily 
assimilable and turned to good account by the crops we desire 
to produce. 

Illustrations in Practice — Good Farming the Surest and 

Cheapest. 
Now, I refer to all this as proving in a general way, the 
bounty of Nature — that she only requires in man, as I just 
remarked, industry and ingenuity enough to follow the hints she 
gives, to reward his efforts with ample returns. And I might 
point'you to many individual instances proving the same thing. 
The present President of the State Agricultural Society, George 
Geddes, whom perhaps many of you personally know, has a farm 
of 300 acres near Syracuse upon which he has kept for many 
years a constantly increasing flock of sheep. He has always 
been careful to turn all the straw he grows — and his is and has 
always been emphatically a grain farm, with their aid into 
manure ; he has for instance, nearly 70 acres in winter wheat 
and over 70 more in spring grain ; as the flock of sheep has 
increased, so also has his product of grain, — and although the 
flock must now number over 300 head, he tells me that he has 
no doubt he can farther increase it — even perhaps to nearly 
double its present size — at the same time adding to rather than 
diminishing his grain crops — rendering his farm each year some- 
what more fertile than it was the year before — and making the 
prospect of each succeeding crop a surer one as regards vicissi- 
tudes of season or attacks of insects. For it is not the healthy 
crop Avell along, upon a soil in the best possible order, that is 
likely to suffer from any slight drawback — it has an inherent 
strength and vital power to withstand dangers which would 
prove fatal to the later and punier product of a starved and 
starving soil. Good farming is thus the surest farming, as it is 
also the cheapest farming; for every additional bushel of grain 
or hundred weight of hay which is grown upon an acre lessens 
the cost per bushel or per cwt. of all the rest — the labor being 
in proportion to the surface cultivated, rather than to the crop 
produced. Said a young farmer to me the other day — " I only 
mow one-half the number of acres I did four or five years ago — 
having let a part of my grass land for pasturage ; but, by greater 
economy of manures, my hay crop is now as large as it was 
before, and I keep just as much stock the year round." There are 
probably similar instances within the knowledge of you all — 



17 

affording ample illustration of the truth I have been endeavoring 
to enforce — that none of us have as yet fully tested the capabili- 
ties of our farms under a proper system of management. How 
many of us, for example, in the older settled parts of the country, 
have in truth better and as yet untouched farms, awaiting the 
plowshare and the plant-root, away down underneath the ones 
we have been so long and so shallowly cultivating on the top. 

" One Well-fed Acre more Profitable than Three Poor-fed 

Acres." 

It was remarked by the late Judge Buel, in an address deli- 
vered more than 20 years ago before the Agricultural Institute 
of New London and Windham Counties, Conn., every word of 
which, however, is as true and as well worthy of attentive study 
to-day as when it was written, that "we better understand the 
economical management of our animals than we do of plants. 
We all know that we cannot make fat beef, or pork, or mutton 
profitably without we feed high. It requires a certain amount 
of food to keep an animal in condition — all beyond this which 
the beast can consume, digest and assimilate, is virtually 
converted into flesh. Now, it makes a vast difference whe- 
ther this extra food is converted into flesh in three months 
or in twelve months ; because in the former case, three- 
fourths of the ordinary food required to sustain life and 
condition for a year, is saved to the feeder, beside an 
equal expense in attendance. It is precisely so with our 
crops. One well-fed acre is more profitable than three poor- 
fed acres, because it requires but one-third the labor, and 
will oftentimes give an equal or greater product."* Our best 
farmers uniformly act upon the principles thus enunciated by 
Judge Buel. 

Bad Farming at the Present Day less Excusable than Ever 

Before. 
In asserting as I did, that it apparently requires the experience 
of several generations to educate the farmers of a country into 
the liberal application of manures, I was not necessarily casting 
a slur upon their proverbially conservative fondness for old 
modes of practice. For while we are all bound to pay a certain 
regard to the interests of posterity, so far as not to squander 

* See " The Cultivator " for December, 1839, page 194. 

3 



18 

the wealth — whether stored in the soil by Nature or acquired by 
the industry of man — of which we are in reality no more than 
the temporary stewards, — it is difficult to blame the cultivator 
of a virgin soil very severely for endeavoring to postpone as long 
as possible the evil day of laborious and expensive manuring. 
Thus it is not impossible that, taking the farmers of the longest 
cultivated parts of the State as a class, they may have so farmed 
during past generations — with some improvident exceptions as 
to individuals or localities — as to have obtained for the time 
being and according to the measure of light they enjoyed, the 
most return in proportion to the capital they had to invest — 
not always, however, most wisely in view of the profits of those 
who were to succeed them. And yet there were, in the days of 
our fathers as now, without doubt, occasional instances of care- 
ful observation and thorough-going practice, to one or more of 
which the memories of us all may possibly extend — instances of 
success, then too often ascribed to mere " good luck," which, if 
they had been brought down in detail to the present day, might 
have been found to foreshadow nearly everything which we can 
even now include under the comprehensive title of good farming. 
On the other hand, then as now, lands that proved suitable for 
some one crop were kept under that crop year after year in a 
most suicidal way, until it could no longer be produced ; then as 
now, many of the simplest dictates of reason were overlooked 
from lack of thought — from mental rather than bodily inaction 
or slothfulness — but now there is less excuse than then, for the 
existence of such faults among us, and as they have been brought 
into strong contrast with the principles and practices of a wise, 
far-seeing and money-making Husbandry, as displayed in the 
columns of our Agricultural papers, and through the medium of 
our Agricultural Exhibitions, it is scarcely surprising that we 
have sometimes seemed to be constantly growing worse and 
worse than our fathers, instead of simply to be improving so 
little upon the example they set before us. 

Average Crops as Estimated Sixty or Seventy Years Ago. 

As to the real averages of the crops produced in this country 
in former years, we find that Gen. Washington, in 1790, in a 
letter to Sir John Sinclair, computed the average crop of Penn- 
sylvania, which State he selected as showing the highest degree of 
cultivation then attained among us — as 15 bushels of wheat per 



19 

acre, 20 of rye, 30 of oats, 25 of Indian corn, 75 of potatoes ; 
and Mr. Strickland, an eminent British farmer who resided in 
this country some time, near the close of the last or the begin- 
ning of the present century, in a communication to the British 
Board of Agriculture, stated our average wheat crop at 12 
bushels per acre, except in Duchess County in this State, which 
was then a great wheat growing region, where he considered the 
average return equal to 16 bushels per acre.* These figures 
accord so nearly with the best estimates of our general average 
production now, that we are forced to look for whatever im- 
provement there has been, in some other direction than in the 
actual amounts of grain harvested per acre — and we shall find 
evidences of its existence, I think, in the extension of our grain 
crops upon lands which were at one time thought totally unpro- 
ductive of them — in the care taken of our grass lands and the 
better results thence obtained, — in cheapening the cost of what 
we do raise, by the adoption of better implements and of horse 
machinery ; in the greater and more skillfully directed attention 
now paid to dairying and to other particular branches of farm- 
ing, where a demand has arisen for them ; in fine, in preparing 
the way, by slow stages, for a still more progressive future, as 
we come to learn, with every recurring year more and more 
thoroughly, the importance of deeper cultivation and regular 
manuring, and as the old idea of a change of location every 
little while, gradually dies away, and farmers who inhabit the 
homesteads of their fathers, look upon them as likely to become 
also the homesteads of their sons and grandsons. 

The Course of our Population does not Prove the " Decay 
of our Agriculture." 
And if our rural population has increased less rapidly than 
that of our cities and towns, and in here and there a case actually 
shown a slight falling off, — here again there are two important 
considerations which we must not overlook : In the first place, 
we can with difficulty estimate the number of those whose 
absence from farm-labor is fully made up to us in various ways 
— by the immense numbers of reapers and mowers we now 
employ, by the use of machinery in thrashing and the substitu- 
tion of cultivators instead of the hand-hoe, and by the vast 



* See Judge Buel's Address before the New Jersey State Agricultural Society, published 
in " The Cultivator " for November, 1839, page 178. 



20 

saving in the time required to market the products of the farm 
when it is done by railroad or steamboat, instead of teaming 
them a score or two miles over heavy wagon roads, and spending 
perhaps a week to do what a letter will to-day accomplish by 
" return of mail." In the second place, there are many drawn 
away from the rural districts, who when there never belonged 
strictly to the farming population of the country ; the railroads 
and other influences are constantly centralizing many kinds of 
industry in the cities which were formerly carried on to better 
advantage in villages, or indeed at every cross-road. The imple- 
ments of the farm, from the plow all the way through the list, 
formerly were made singly by scattered smiths and mechanics, 
instead of by the wholesale in huge factories ; the clothing of the 
farmer, from his hat to his boots, was more generally cut and 
put together, if not its very materials manufactured, almost at 
his door, instead of coming ready-made from distant cities and 
towns ; in fine, access to the great marts has been rendered so 
easy that much of the trading even has left the villages for more 
central and important points. In all these ways, the cities have 
gained at the expense of the country — not at the expense of the 
farm; while the farmers have gained all the time in the more 
general adoption of improved machinery ; in increased consump- 
tion of their products, and in the power of obtaining better 
manufactures at lower prices. 

Economy of Manures as the Mainspring of all Agricul- 
tural Improvement. 

During the three summer months of 1859 I had perhaps 
unusually favorable opportunities of intercourse with some of 
the best farmers both of England and Scotland. The more I saw 
of their methods of management, the more deeply I was impressed 
with the neglect and wastefulness which characterize our treat- 
ment in America of manurial materials, as contrasted with the 
attention, labor and money there so profusely expended upon 
this object. And, comparing the condition of English Agricul- 
ture as represented to us by Arthur Young eighty years ago, 
with its present character, we cannot but come to the conclusion 
that it is precisely in this direction that the most improvement 
has been accomplished — herein, at least, that the changes which 
have successively occurred have been most marked, both in their 
nature and results, until the English farmer has come to regard 



21 

his supply of fertilizers as the mainspring of every other opera- 
tion — the one central motive power that regulates and directs 
everything else he undertakes. The extent of surface each year 
devoted to the feeding crops, clovers and the roots, has been 
constantly gaining in proportion to that devoted to the cereals 
constituting the food of man — in other words the true secret of 
increasing the wheat crop was found to be — not necessarily to 
sow and reap more acres, by any means, but to put a larger sur- 
face under crops which could be turned into manure for the wheat 
fields. This is what is going on step by step, upon our best 
farms here. What is the case of Mr. Geddes, to whom I have 
already referred, but an instance in point — ever increasing the 
stock upon his land, but also increasing his grain crop, — not by 
devoting a larger surface to the latter, but by enriching that 
surface, and even diminishing its extent as it grows richer in 
quality? You have, perhaps, heard of the old Scotchman, who, 
in response to a young farmer seeking his advice as to the true 
secret of success in his pursuit, summed up the experience of his 
own life, in this pithy and comprehensive Avarning : " Never, 
Sandie, never — above all things, never go into debt, but if ever 
you do go into debt, let it be for Manures .'" 

Peculiar Advantages of our Dairy Regions in this Respect. 

The study of British Agriculture, in its onward career, let me 
once more repeat — not less than what we may note of success 
and failure among our own farmers — must thus lead us to hinge 
almost every question of progress and improvement — I leave you 
to determine, from your own experience, how justly — upon the 
one great and over-ruling question of Manures and Manuring. 
It is in this, as I just intimated, that the deficiencies of our 
farming strike the observer from abroad most pointedly — in this 
that we seem to be perhaps eighty or a hundred years behind 
Great Britain. What opportunities, too, are enjoyed, especially 
in the Dairy regions of the State, for the enrichment of the land : 
deriving a ready source of profit from the animals of the farm, 
their contributions towards its increased fertility cost little if 
anything beyond the degree of labor and attention required to 
preserve and apply what they cannot choose but give ; and 
there is not the excuse for neglect in this regard, which 
sometimes does exist, where it is necessary to strike a balance, 
on the one hand, between the services of cattle or sheep in the 



22 

manufacture of manures, and, on the other, the loss resulting 
from their keep, owing either to the high prices at which they 
are bought, or to the money-value of what they consume. But 
after due allowance for the importance of these services, I know 
of no locality in which there would be any doubt upon which 
side the balance of loss or gain must ultimately turn — none, in 
which the farmer can afford to neglect the domestic animals of 
the farm as the means of permanently sustaining its productive 
powers. And, as we look over the Agricultural capacities of 
our own and the other Eastern States, as yet so imperfectly 
developed, and find the first flush of virgin wealth already faded 
from so large a portion of their surface, while cheaper beef and 
wheat than we can raise without a better system of management, 
are coming down upon us over the great railroad lines that 
now link the harbors of New York and Boston with every por- 
tion of those vast regions where, in the days of our fathers, the 
Bison and the tomahawk were far more at home than the Short 
Horn and the reaper's sickle, — this question of manures — involv- 
ing the question of making the most of our land for present and 
future years — acquires new grandeur and importance to us, and 
the example of our English brethren becomes still more worthy 
of our study and imitation. 

A Prosperous Agriculture the Foundation of all National 
Prosperity — the Existence of the One proves the Exist- 
ence of the Other. 

If I have succeeded in making my meaning sufficiently clear to 
have been followed during the preceding train of thought, — you 
will have discovered that my main object has been to point out 
the sources of encouragement — the incentives and exigencies — 
which now urge upon the Farmer — especially the Farmers of 
New York — renewed efforts for Better Farming. Standing in 
an emergency new to our experience, unprecedented in the his- 
tory of the world — believe me, gentlemen, the condition of our 
country, the progress of our Agriculture, the current rates for 
our products, all admonish us that this is no time to neglect the 
Farm — to pause or turn back in the career of improvement. As 
to the part which the Farmer has taken in the past history of our 
National Growth and Progression, there can be no doubt. If 
time allowed me to trace it on this occasion, you would ask no 
farther evidence that whatever promotes the farmer's prosperity 



23 

must give a fresh impulse to every channel of business — buoy- 
ancy to trade, activity to manufactures, food to the hungry of 
other nations, money to be expended in our own, in perfecting 
old enterprises and in undertaking new ones. In that history, as 
a whole, it is no gloomy picture that I should have to present, — ■ 
of lands exhausted and abandoned — of fertility exchanged for 
barrenness — of straggling briars and worthless underbrush 
starving over a surface once waving with grain and grass. It is 
no sad outline of a population constantly growing more prolific 
and more indigent ; of a peasantry gaining nothing in intelli- 
gence, if not separated by a line every day broader and more 
impassable, from the acquisition of knowledge and the chances of 
advancement ; of children bred to ill-rewarded toil or shiftless 
indolence where their ancestors were in comfortable and thriving 
industry ; of a state of Society in which labor involves disgrace, 
because disgracefully paid, if not disgracefully done ; of this 
labor ever descending more and more nearly to the level of that 
which the brute is trained to perform, for the lack of mind and 
of encouragement for its exercise. All this and more, we may 
find in many another land — Thank God that here the truth is, 
and has always been, far different ! Such is the almost inevita- 
ble record of a country whose Agriculture is in reality going 
backward — whose soils are in truth becoming exhausted — whose 
farming is the task of the menial or the serf. How great the 
contrast between such a history and that which the descendants 
of the Pilgrim Fathers have wrought out ! What but their 
farming has transformed the whole face of this broad land from 
a wilderness to fruitful fields ? What, if not farming, has fed 
and clothed and schooled the masses of our people — constructed 
our Academies, Colleges, Churches and public buildings — yes, 
and built up the greatness of our Cities by supplying them with 
fresh blood and brains, educated by its profits — and unweakened 
by their cares and dissipations ? Agriculture is the immediate 
sire of Commerce ; and the wealth of the merchant and the 
manufacturer finds its first sources in the wealth of the farmer. 
The prosperity of those who buy and sell, or re-shape the raw 
material for human use, is so dependant upon the prosperity of 
the great class which produces, that the statistics which prove 
the vast growth of our commercial transactions, conclusively 
prove — not that in here and there an instance our farmers have 
been successful — but that success has been the rule instead of 



24 

the exception — that the producing classes have been constantly 
enabled to indulge in new luxuries and expend more money, and 
that, as a whole, both they and the country at large have been 
rapidly growing richer and richer. 

What is to be the Future of this Career ? 

And now, gentlemen, I will detain you but a moment longer. 
If it is true in ordinary seasons that a prosperous and well-con- 
ducted Agriculture is the mainstay of a country, how much 
more is such the case in the trying circumstances in which we 
are now placed. The rule or ruin policy which has apparently 
been the source on the part of the South, of the present National 
difficulties, is one which, once admitted, must be the destruction 
of any form of government. It can only survive in the death of 
republican liberty. It can only triumph in the ruin of popular 
rights — in the extinction of that faith in self-government wherein 
the grand authors of our independence fought and conquered. 
By the ordering of Providence, we have a most striking example 
of its inevitable results in our sister republic of Mexico, in which 
civil war seems to have become a chronic difficulty — a part of 
the established order of things. No expense can be too great — 
no sacrifice too costly, as bulwarks against such a flood of misery, 
anarchy and destruction. I know this is no place to discuss 
questions of public policy, or to mingle the clamors of war, with 
the peaceful sounds of rural industry. But in such an emer- 
gency as this, private pursuits or party lines should become the 
means of linking us all closer, as rivals only in patriotic fervor ; 
— looking back upon the glorious career of those who first estab- 
lished our independence, in its defence let us emulate their exer- 
tions. Remembering " how dark a night it was that preceded 
the dawning of our National existence," let us not despair 
because its sunlight may be obscured by the passing tempest, 
its strength and manhood subjected to their first great test. The 
success of the right — the vindication of the ballot-box as the 
index of the popular will — the re-establishment of the Federal 
power, in all its former length and breadth and grandeur, can be 
no more than a question of time, if we are really united and in 
earnest, — worthy to enjoy the inheritance we have received, and 
determined to transmit it, unimpaired and untarnished, to those 
who are to come after us ! 



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